Join us on Twitter and IRC (#ludumdare on Afternet.org) for the Theme Announcement!

Thanks everyone for coming out! For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Playing and Rating the games you created.You NEED ratings to get a score at the end. Play and Rate games to help others find your game.We’ll be announcing Ludum Dare 36’s August date alongside the results.

New Server: Welcome to the New (less expensive) Server! Find any problems? Report them here.

Salutations and celebrations! The deed is done. I had a plan and more or less managed to complete it.
Very little sleeping was done in total (7h), not a lot of junk food was eaten surprisingly and even the shower got a bit of use.

It seems Google Drive has changed again and the hosting doesn’t quite work for Unity Web player anymore. Any ideas to go around this kind of stuff?

Dream Team started as an idea to form a group of proven Ludum Dare vets and game jamming badasses in an effort to create world peace. In a weird sort of way, we accomplished that goal. With 7 combined Ludum Dare medals and 15 total competitions between us, we combined our efforts to create one large, frightening mass of game design ooey gooey goodness. We hope you like it!

So what exactly IS EcoStar vs Aeronox?

The evil Aeronox forces have sent our planet into hyper orbit, sending us spiraling out of control and fast forwarding our years at breakneck speed! You may think this is just another shooter, but that’s where our interpretation of the theme comes into play. The seasons change every 10 seconds, and it alters the entire world around you… the sights, the sounds, the foes, and even the power of your own ship. Each season has a corresponding elemental power that is absorbed and unleashed by EcoStar’s stellar charge blast. Combined with elemental enemies and shields, this creates a shoot-em-up unlike any other… where the focus isn’t always on shooting the fastest… but on making the RIGHT shot a the RIGHT time.

And please be sure to read the included HOW TO PLAY document for an explanation of the rules and controls. We also have Xbox 360 gamepad support, and we highly suggest that control scheme if you want to win!

We’ll be back at a later date to discuss what went right, what went wrong, and to deliver a radical post-compo version. In the meantime, we’re going to get some much needed rest. Ditto worked on squashing two game breaking bugs after the initial submission (Sweden vs U.S.A. decimals & commas? Really?!) and SonnyBone stayed awake for 36 hours and is now typing this sentence. He is going slightly crazy and is starting to refer to himself in the third person. He sure is attractive and very smart. XXXOOO

Celebratory pizza anyone? I’m feeling oh, so, good having finished my first jam! The finished product isn’t the best by a long shot but, hey, I made it! You made it! Everyone who made it gets a slice ^^ Heck, even if you didn’t make it, here’s a slice for attempting this madness.

Sunshine or, in my case, freak storms in life and in nature, aside,… it was a wild and fun–fun–fun, ride!

Please do check it out if you can and see if it suddenly crashes or not so I can get on that! It’s my first VN project I’ve released into the web and I programmed it alone (Is a artist and sub-par-writer under pressure here usually) so, do excuse me if it’s just one, big, bug!

I dared and won! Now to sleep, eat and get back to my schooling. *stuffs face and hands y’all some*

Bun is out right before the count! Well, until the morning when she fixes all the mistakes.

I’m SUPER-DUPER excited because this is my first ever TOTALLY complete LD entry ever! I managed to implement, I believe 100% of the features I planned! I improved the art and sound a bit at the last second, all my controls work, and I’m not aware of any bugs! (I’m sure someone’ll find something…) Even if I get the lowest rating in the history of LD, I’ll consider this to be a huge success!

I’ve got my code up, but haven’t squished it down into an executable for y’all yet. I’ll try to do that tomorrow!

I look forward to playing and rating tons of games in the coming weeks, especially since many of them will be short enough for me to test them in slow moments at work.

My game is fully playable and, so far as I can see right now, bug free! As you can see in this screenshot, though, I need to put the scoring into the game itself – right now it just shows up in the console. Also still like to redo my temp art… there might be time for it. Also more sounds? That’s low priority. Probably won’t happen.

My desire to make a dotalike for this competition rose out of the fact that I really enjoy dota but am unable to get my coworkers to play it with me. I wanted to make something that is similar to dota that matches the sort of games that we play and enjoy at the office, in the hope that would get them interested in the real thing. I was also interested in exploring what makes dota fun for me, and if I can find that fun thing in a week.

I have written previously about what I liked about dota, and strangely enough, I don’t think I included much of those things in the game that I made this week. What I did manage to include was a somewhat grindy game that tips over into an endstate with a surprising speed, and has some of the micro work that goes into a dota match. There isn’t as much teamwork in this game, because it turns out that organizing alliances is something that doesn’t just happen in a quick match. I suspect that alliances are a thing that can happen when you actually have time to think out the whole issue.

This is also the second multiplayer game that I have made in a row, and I think I am starting to close in on what would make a successful one. The first game we just finished is local only, but only requires two players to play. I solved the local only with this one, but added a new wrinkle, which is that you need exactly 3 players. It is a bit frustrating that social pressures force you towards certain types of games, but I suppose I could work on making this something that would support 2-x number of players. Potentially by adding teams, or by having more players at once.

The other direction that I could build this game in is to add more abilities for each player. Making the dash a triggerable state with a cooldown made it feel a ton more like dota, and I think that adding a set of ultimates for each player would add a really nice last ditch phase to the game where everyone is triggering ultimates, or saving them to exactly the right time. I am not sure if adding the tech tree / store system to this game would be a good idea or not, but having different builds for the players is something that would be interesting. Basically adding complexity to create depth.

So I’ve completed my game. Or should I say, the time is up and thus my game is finished.

I have to admit, over the past 48 hours even though it didn’t feel like I got much done I feel completely drained from it all.
I am however very happy and glad to be finished, at somepoint during today there were times I didn’t think I would be able to hand anything more than a basic prototype in. I’m glad I stuck through and kept going.

For those that are reading who have participated. Well done, I’ve been watching all your games and it’s been interesting to see how much progress (or how little) everyone had made.